Antonello Proietti

I am Antonello Proietti, born and raised in Rome, where I still live. My story with photography began in the early 1980s, and in the beginning I photographed everything: portraits, weddings, reportage, still life. What drew me was simple curiosity, the wish to keep something that would otherwise disappear. Each genre taught me something, but I always felt I was looking for something else. Landscape did not arrive as a choice. It arrived as a need. Photography has always lived alongside another professional life, in education and interior design, but it has never been a hobby on the side. It is a daily commitment.

I keep returning to silence and slowness. Deserts, glaciers, stormy oceans, snowy mountains: places that move at a speed that is not ours. We live surrounded by rhythms measured in notifications rather than seasons. Nature does not follow them. A glacier moves in centuries, a mountain is in no hurry to show itself. When I stand in front of that, I slow down too. My breath gets longer, my mind gets quieter. I think I return to these places because they give me back something everyday life tends to wear away.

A sense of quiet. My images are rarely loud, even when the sky is stormy. I like few elements, a lot of space around them, and light that guides the eye without shouting. More and more I work in black and white and with a minimal composition, because they take away what is not essential and leave only light, shape and silence. If someone looks at one of my photographs and feels the urge to breathe more slowly, then I think it is recognisably mine.

Yes, and I remember it clearly. In 1987 I reached the summit of Teide, in the Canary Islands, and for the first time in my life I saw the curvature of the earth. I stood there for a long time. It was not just a beautiful view; it was the feeling of being very small inside something immense, something you cannot take in with one look. I had photographed many subjects before that day, but that was when landscape started asking me for a different kind of attention. In a way, I have been trying to go back to that summit ever since.

Preparation gets me to the right place, technique makes sure I do not miss the moment, but intuition decides when to press the shutter. I study maps, weather and light before leaving, and then, once I am there, I try to forget the plan. I walk, I watch, I wait. Technique should become invisible, like grammar when you speak your own language: it is there, but you no longer think about it. The real work happens in the waiting, when a place stops being a backdrop and becomes a presence.

I took “Love in Lagoon” in Chile in 2024. I was on the shore of a lagoon, and the water was so still that it looked like a mirror. The whole place seemed to be holding its breath. Two flamingos were standing far apart, each in its own silence. Then one of them opened its wings and started walking across the water, splashing, almost dancing, while the other stood quietly a little further away, watching. It lasted only a few seconds. I had been waiting for something like that without knowing exactly what it would be.

The contrast between the two birds. One was all movement and the other all stillness, and yet they seemed connected. To me it looked like a small courtship, a gesture of affection between two creatures in the middle of all that calm. In front of that scene I felt pure pleasure, the simple joy of looking at something beautiful. When a moment makes you smile before you even lift the camera, you know it is worth keeping.

Timing first: the open wings and the splashes last a fraction of a second. Then the space. I left a lot of empty water between the two flamingos, because that distance is part of the story; it is where the feeling lives. The mirror-like water doubled every gesture with its reflection. And I chose black and white because I did not want the pink of the feathers to take all the attention. Without colour, what remains is the gesture, the reflection and the silence around them.

Calm. Nothing dramatic happens in this image: two flamingos, a lagoon, a moment of grace. For me it is simply a testimony of the pleasure you feel when you stop and look at the beauty of nature in complete tranquillity. I would like viewers to carry away that small pause, and perhaps the wish to stop a little longer the next time something beautiful happens in front of them.

It taught me patience. Landscape photography is mostly waiting, and most outings produce nothing. At first that felt like a waste of time; now I think it is the most valuable part. Waiting teaches you to look properly, to notice how light changes on a wall, how a street sounds at dawn, how people move when they think nobody is watching. I bring that attention back into everyday life, into teaching and into design. Photography made me slower, and I think it made me a better observer of everything.

Every photograph I take is born from the same question: what remains of a place when everything else moves away? And behind it there is a hope: that people remember these places are worth protecting. The landscapes I photograph have given me calm, clarity, a kind of physical wellbeing that is hard to describe. Glaciers are shrinking, coastlines are changing, and what today offers us a refuge from our own rush is not guaranteed forever. I am not an activist, but I believe that showing a place with care is already a way of defending it.

I have been entering international competitions for many years, and I still do it for the same reason: to see whether what I feel in front of a place can reach people who do not know me and judge only the images. I was attracted by the idea behind 12AWARDS, twelve categories and twelve different ways of seeing. When I read that “Love in Lagoon” had received a Commended, together with three Acceptances, I was genuinely happy. After so many years the excitement has never really changed. Every recognition feels like a small confirmation that the waiting was worth it.

I am building a new website where my work will be presented as a collection of limited edition fine art prints. Bringing images into print matters to me, because that is where a photograph finally becomes an object to live with, not just something to scroll past on a screen. At the same time I want to keep exploring black and white and a more essential, minimal way of composing. And of course I want to keep travelling: there is always a new place, a different light, a sky that will never repeat itself in the same way.

My experience has been very positive. The submission process was clear, communication was kind and timely, and I appreciate that the competition gives photographers space to tell the story behind their images, as this interview does. As a suggestion, I think many photographers would value a short comment from the jury on their awarded work: even a few words would help us understand what the jury saw and grow from it.

Only one thing: the value of slowness. We often think of photography as something fast, a click, a moment. For me it is the opposite. My best images come from hours of waiting, from returning to the same place in different seasons, from accepting that nature has its own timing. I think we all need a bit more of that slowness in our lives. If my photographs can offer even a few seconds of it to someone, then they have done what I hoped.